The Penny Arcade Expo, or PAX, for the initiated, is an annual gaming conference held in Seattle. It was created in 2004 by the authors of the Penny Arcade webcomic, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, who wanted to go to a gaming show that focused on their own passions: console games, computer games, and tabletop games.

PAX got big, fast. Billed as a celebration of gamer culture, PAX, and spin-off conference PAX East, is more of a giant nerd gathering, contrasting nicely with the hard-pounding media-fest of the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) or the academic and developer focus of the Games Developer Conference (GDC). PAX is for gamers, by gamers, of all stripe and affiliation.

The Peablins are back.

The Peablins, for those not in the know, are the stars of 10tons’ hit iOS game, Joining Hands, a cute little puzzler that challenged players to connect a bunch of cute, gentle creatures across a variety of landscapes and levels.

The sequel takes the warmth and cute-factor of the first game and just knocks it out of the park. It helps that Joining Hands 2 is also a pretty fantastic little puzzle game, too.

Clear your schedule for the weekend because you won’t want to leave the house. After a lengthy wait, BioShock Infinite and the new SimCity are now available for your Mac. You can download BioShock Infinite from the Mac App Store or from Steam, where it’ll cost you $39.99; while SimCity is available through EA’s Origin platform starting at $39.99.

But both titles can be downloaded for free if you already purchased them for PC.

As it turns out, I end up having to sign a lot of documents, such as contracts, IRS forms, and the like. Many of these are in PDF form (bravo), and some even let me fill them out via my keyboard (even better).

Unfortunately, they still expect us to print these babies out, sign them with a pen, and then get them back into some sort of digital format, via a scanner or picture with our iPhone or something.

Luckily, Apple’s own Preview makes all that superflous. It’s super easy to get your pen and paper signature onto a PDF. Here’s how.

Did you ever find yourself using the amazing Snapseed and thinking to yourself, “man, I love this app more than a man should love a piece of photo-editing software, but I sure wish it could do more. Like, what if it could save my edits as presets?”

Well, you lucky, app-loving deviant, you: your wish has been answered. No, not by Snapseed, which Google will surely kill off soon enough anyway, but by a brand new app called Photoristic.

Flickr’s iPhone app has gotten big revamp, and if it weren’t for another great photo app release today (called Photoristic), it could actually become my new favorite iOS photo editor. But what the “What’s new?” section in the App Store doesn’t mention is the new UI that accompanies it.

Mailbox, the popular email app for iPhone, has been updated with a big feature: the ability to search for Gmail messages stored in the cloud. Searching was previously limited to locally stored messages only.

It’s been a while since a mouse had me licking my MacBook’s screen with gadget lust, but a few seconds after first looking at Logitech’s new Bluetooth-powered Ultrathin Touch Mouse T630 and my rMBP’s glossy panel was covered with a thick coat of saliva. (Seriously, doesn’t anyone else lick their screen? Am I the only one?*)

Philips Hue lights have quickly become one of favorite new iOS accessories thanks to a bunch of neat hacks and apps that have take advantage of the connected lights. Until now, Hue has mainly been controlled via an iOS app, but Hue Menu for OS X makes it so you can finally control Hue from your Mac.

Hue Menu is a new menu bar app that not only allows users to turn their Hue bulbs on/off, but you can also change the colors, create presets, pick custom colors using your own photos or the Mac OS color Picker and more. At $2.99, the app is an easy buy for Hue owners, plus the developer behind it says upcoming features will include alarms, timers, and geo-fencing.

Here are the full release notes:

The fifth-generation iPad’s new front panel, which sports thinner bezels down the sides of its display, has appeared yet again in a new high quality gallery. The panel already has its digitizer and flex cables fitted, and it appears to be a genuine Apple component straight off the production line.